Remove a single value from a NameValueCollection

Question

My data source could have duplicate keys with values.

typeA : 1

typeB : 2

typeA : 11

I chose to use NameValueCollection as it enables entering duplicate keys.

I want to remove specific key\value pair from the collection, but NameValueCollection.Remove(key) removes all values associated with the specified key.

1. Is there a way to remove single key\value pair from a NameValueCollection, OR
2. Is there a better collection in C# that fits my data

[EDIT 1]

First, thanks for all the answers :)

I think I should have mentioned that my data source is XML.

I used System.Xml.Linq.XDocument to query for type and also it was handy to remove a particular value.

Now, my question is, for large size data, is using XDocument a good choice considering the performance? If not what are other alternatives (maybe back to NameValueCollection and using one of the techniques mentioned to remove data)

Answer 1

The idea of storing multiple values with the same key is somehow strange. But I think you can retrieve all values using GetValues then remove the one you don't need and put them back using Set and then subsequent Add methods. You can make a separate extension method method for this.

Answer 2

NameValueCollection doesn't really allow to have multiple entries with the same key. It merely concatenates the new values of existing keys into a comma separated list of values (see NameValueCollection.Add.

So there really is just a single value per key. You could conceivably get the value split them on ',' and remove the offending value.

Edit: @ElDog is correct, there is a GetValues method which does this for you so no need to split.

A better option I think would be to use Dictionary<string, IList<int>> or Dictionary<string, ISet<int>> to store the values as discrete erm, values